RETURNS FALL 2019

Professor Qwbli's invites you and your pre-schooler to join us for a six-week exploration of Body Awareness & Balance with our 5 Little Monkeys Pre-K program.

WHY IS BODY AWARENESS IMPORTANT?

In short, Body Awareness helps your child understand and learn from the world around them. Kids are experts at falling down. It doesn't matter if they are playing their favorite sport or just walking across the room, your kids learn about the wonders of gravity. Movement is one of the most significant ways children interact with their environment. Therefore, understanding where their bodies are in space and how their bodies move is integral to a child ability to learn from the world around them. It also contributes to their sense of self.

Decades of research has shown that there are key building blocks and milestones necessary to develop body awareness, balance & coordination - all of which impact your child's ability to learn from the world around them:

Attention and concentration: The ability to maintain attention to a specific task for an extended period of time as the core strength is not challenged.

Body Awareness: Knowing body parts and understanding the body’s movement in space in relation to other limbs and objects for negotiating the environment

Bilateral integration: Using two hands together with one hand leading: e.g. holding a tennis racquet with the non-dominant hand with the ‘helping’ non-dominant hand holding and stabilizing only between hits.

Crossing Mid-line: The ability to cross the imaginary line running from the child’s nose to pelvis that divides the body into left and right sides, which also influences hand dominance.

Hand-eye coordination: The ability to process information received from the eyes to control, guide and direct the hands in the performance of a given task such as handwriting or catching a ball.

Hand Dominance: The consistent use of one (usually the same) hand for task performance which is necessary to allow refined skills to develop.

Muscular strength: A muscles ability to exert force against resistance (e.g when climbing a tree to push or pull up).

Muscular endurance: The ability of a singular muscle or group of muscles to exert force repeatedly against resistance to allow sustained physical task engagement.

Self-regulation: The ability to obtain, maintain and change alertness level appropriate for a task or situation which then allows better attention to the task.

Postural Control: The ability to stabilize the trunk and neck to enable coordination of the limbs for controlled task performance.

Body Awareness (Proprioception): The information that the brain receives from the muscles and joints to make us aware of body position and body movement which in turn allows skills to become ‘automatic’.

Sensory processing: The accurate processing of sensory stimulation in the environment as well as in our own body for quick and physically appropriate responses to movement.

Isolated movement: The ability to move an arm or leg while keeping the remainder of the body still needed for refined movement (e.g. throwing a ball on handed or swimming freestyle).

Each week we will explore these building blocks and milestones through laughter-inducing play & exploration. You and your little will have a blast exploring what their bodies can do!